Already Inside

From an interview with actress Michelle Williams in the New York Times yesterday:

[While portraying a character whose financial situation unravels] “I thought a lot about what you look like when you think nobody’s looking at you, when you feel completely invisible. Your entire life happens inside because you don’t think anyone notices you. Which is very different from me. Not that I don’t have any inside life, but I feel watched, all the time.”

“...Acting sometimes reminds me of therapy in that the more you talk about a traumatic or profound event, the more it loses its emotional tension. Switch on a bright light and find there is no boogeyman in the closet. So it is the same with a scene. Never tell the other actor or the director what you are doing.”

[She explained that the trick is to allow herself] “to live in so much mystery, to rely on a feeling, an instinct, on faith, really, that everything I need is already inside me, and best I just don’t block the exit.”